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She hasn’t had a substantial lead role in nine years, is rarely seen in public and can’t really act, yet Winona Ryder remains the most important, relevant movie star of her generation. This, even though her image should have calcified in the last decade; her filmography reads like a cultural synopsis of kids in 1990s America. “Heathers” (technically 1989, but still), the blackest comedy about high school ever made; 1994’s “Reality Bites,” an of-the-moment Gen-X dramedy that for some reason really resonates with Gen Y; and 1999’s “Girl, Interrupted,” which alternately captured the era’s fascination with smart, disturbed young women and presaged the current culture of recreational psychopharmacology.

Winona made her last big movie in 2000, a maudlin romance called “Autumn in New York,” in which she played — very, very badly — a young woman dying of cancer who falls in love with Richard Gere. It’s so awful that every time you flip past it on cable you can’t stop watching till it’s over. It killed her career.

Yet here she is on the cover of this month’s UK Elle, looking the same as always. Winona doesn’t age, but she doesn’t look stuck in the past, either. Now 37, she has a cameo in the new “Star Trek” (as Spock’s mother!) and a role in writer-director Rebecca Miller’s upcoming movie, “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.” Miller conducted the Elle interview, and writes, “I feel like I grew up with Winona Ryder without meeting her.”

This partly explains Winona’s longevity — a whole generation of misfit girls grew up on her movies, her outsider ethos, her readily identifiable persona. She was the perfect movie star for the bubbling alterna-culture of the ’90s. She had the right taste in everything, and kids her age didn’t resent her for it. This despite her fame, her beauty, her engagement to Johnny Depp — which, when it ended, wrecked her. She tells Miller that she had an “extra-large breakdown.” (After the relationship, Depp had his famous “Winona Forever” tattoo altered to “Wino Forever,” as much a totem of the ’90s as Nirvana’s “Nevermind” or Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction.”)

“You’re no one in the rock industry unless you’ve feuded with me or slept with Winona,” said Courtney Love, and Winona has been linked with each of these rock stars in their prime: Paul Westerberg, Dave Pirner, Dave Grohl, Beck, Bono, Jakob Dylan, Evan Dando, Page Hamilton, Rhett Miller, Ryan Adams, Conor Oberst, Blake Sennett. This list, you will note, stretches from the late ’80s to 2009, beginning with the Replacements’ Westerberg and ending with Rilo Kiley’s Sennett. Winona moves with the times.

The same cannot be said of her peers. Who among Winona’s contemporaries rivals her influence? Christina Ricci? Claire Danes? Kirsten Dunst? Gwyneth Paltrow? (More on her later.) As for Angelina Jolie — who co-starred with Winona in “Girl, Interrupted” and won the Oscar — she’s in another stratosphere.

But Winona is something that even Jolie is not: a cultural and generational touchstone, an icon who has always felt approachable and flawed. Her influence is felt in fashion, music, books, film and TV. Her godfather was Timothy Leary. She was an active participant in the J.T. Leroy literary hoax, the first celebrity in on it. Marc Jacobs — who cast Winona in his ads after she wore his clothes to her 2001 shoplifting trial — did a whole collection inspired by the Depp-Ryder Goth classic “Edward Scissorhands.”

When she got arrested, anyone worth knowing either had a “Free Winona” T-shirt or believed in her cause. (She later wore it on the cover of W magazine). Curiously, Winona has few obvious imitators among American actresses — it’s French starlets, like Audrey Tatou and Marion Cotillard (who plays Depp’s love interest in the upcoming “Public Enemies”) who have cultivated her look. But Winona has direct descendants in American pop culture: Violet of “The Incredibles,” Rory of “The Gilmore Girls,” even, one could argue, Blair of “Gossip Girl” — dark, smart, sardonic misfits all.

Also: she talks about books as though she actually likes and reads them. She does not do talk shows. She is a mess, shoplifting and chainsmoking and, according to the Smoking Gun, once sharing a pill dispensing rock-doc with Love. Yet if she’s ever been to rehab, we’ll never know, because she’d never tell. She is the opposite of her former best friend Paltrow, who writes a crappy self-help e-newsletter and talks about her diet and exercise tips on “Oprah.”

Whom would you rather be friends with?

Even if Winona never makes another decent movie — and, as much as it pains us to say it, that looks quite likely — she will have goodwill forever because she made “Heathers,” “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands,” “Night on Earth,” “The Age of Innocence,” “Reality Bites,” and “Little Women.” She’ll have goodwill forever because she once said, “I read biographies of the greats, and they were all so messed up I thought I better mess myself up. But I can’t. I’m too small.”

She’ll have goodwill forever because she dated Johnny Depp and still isn’t over it. To paraphrase Johnny: Winona Forever, indeed!